Neomythology - Burnout

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When his father offered to buy him a car for his sixteenth birthday, he asked for a guitar instead, knowing he would get both. The car was a useful way to get around, but the guitar was his ticket to freedom.

He was talented. Really talented. He would practice for hours at a time, and even then he knew he had something inside of him, some spark, that would bring life to the music in a way that could never be attained by practice alone.

Making a name for himself was easy, turning that name into the connections he needed to get a recording contract took a lot more work. It was worth it, he decided, even if he complained every step of the way.

“This is a waste of my time,” he grumbled as he sat in a chair and let two stylists play with his hair, artfully adding products until the photographer could get the shots of him looking like he just rolled out of bed and fell into a deep volcano of smoldering beauty.

He was only truly alive on stage. He fed on the crowd's adoration, and pushed his body to the limit to deliver the performance of their lifetimes. He developed a reputation for skipping his own parties. After a show, he would grab a bottle of whiskey and take it to bed with him, falling asleep to the echoes of screaming fans resonating in his mind.

The liquor flowing inside of him helped the music flow out, and the pills took the edge off of the afternoon sunlight that hit him when he woke up. The injections came later, after the pills gave way to powders and the powders were no longer enough.

It was unhealthy, he knew, but it worked. He saw the proof of that with every new song he wrote. The chemical trances he put himself through would unlock something inside of his mind that instinctively knew how to play. He called himself a shaman in interviews, said he was continuing a long tradition of finding the eternal rhythms that would allow him to reach a higher state of being.

The press loved that, of course. When he asked his manager through a slurred haze whether he should shave half of his hair off, his manager said yes, absolutely, and got an intern to sweep up the mess while he scheduled the next photo shoot.

He wasn't in the mood to get out of bed when his father came to see him, so he didn't.

“You look terrible,” his father said. “Are you on drugs?”

He glared, an expression he'd practiced enough times in the mirror to know it would have the desired effect.

“No, I'm not on drugs,” he snapped. “I'm hung over, yeah, but that's part of the lifestyle.”

“Doesn't seem like much of a lifestyle,” his father remarked. “Maybe you should take a break. Go to rehab, or whatever your handlers decide to call it when they make the announcement.”

His son felt the anger coursing through his veins and clenched his fists to stop himself from finding something to throw at the old man.

“I'm fine,” he growled through clenched teeth. “Fine enough that I won't throw my career away by taking a break now. I'm headlining next week.” He let out a sharp, biting sound that could imitate a laugh. “You should come. It's on a Saturday so you won't even miss work. You can tell all of the mediocre engineers you work with that your son is building something truly great. Himself.”

He was too busy to notice, but his father did get a ticket to see the show that Saturday. There was no time to worry about trivial things like that when he had to get ready.

His half scalp of hair was tightly braided back in small rows. The charcoal liner his stylists applied looked better after he rubbed his eyes, and the bronze paint on his cheekbones gave his face the chiseled look of immortality.

He got on stage and he sang. He sang and he twisted and he made love to the crowd who drank every drop of energy he had to give and pushed over each other as they writhed toward the stage desperately begging for more.

He laughed, catching his breath between songs. His shirt was soaked with the passion of his sweat and he felt himself gasping for air as he stripped it off. He let his glistening skin breathe for a moment as he threw the soaked rag into his audience.

“I am your fucking god,” he screamed, before his heart collapsed in on itself and he crumpled to his knees. A full minute passed before the cheering went silent.

They washed his face before they let his father in to see him. His rest must have been peaceful - the past few years seemed faded and he looked like the golden nineteen year old boy that he was.

His father clasped his hand and kissed his forehead. The doctors talked about the odds and asked if they should try to keep him alive.

“No,” his father said. “Let him go. He'd rather die than wake up like this.”

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♥

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Click here to read more about what I'm doing with Neomythology!

Click here to read more about Icarus!

Click here to see the beautiful painting by @leoplaw that was my inspiration!

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